


Freefall

by Tormented_Gale



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Character Thrown Out a Window, Gen, Tumbler Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-04 10:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4133571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tormented_Gale/pseuds/Tormented_Gale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He falls. Falls and falls and falls. And there's no end in sight - until the ground comes up to greet him and the journey suddenly ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freefall

Surrounded by a group of thugs searching for a easy target – what a way to end his otherwise uneventful day. He glances at each of them in turn, assessing, judging, and he smiles disarmingly as they approach. One behind, one in front, one to either side; it’s almost cute, the way they think they can win.

He blocks the sloppy punch at his ribs and ducks the swing at his cheek. The alcohol is pungent enough to show just what state most of them are in, though the one watching from the front doesn’t share the glazed over look of his comrades. No, he’s focused, and he’s the one Sync won’t turn his back on.

Not one of them gets a lucky hit in. In fact, it’s almost sad how easy it is to force them all to their knees, bow their heads in supplication, in fear. He cocks his head and his hip to the side, and the one in front merely smiles too, like they’re sharing a private secret. Sync takes a step towards him.

It’s a mistake that he’ll reprimand himself for later, if there is a later.

The man had been preparing an arte, and a powerful one at that. From his hands a stream of fire hits Sync dead on. He manages to get his arms up to protect his face, but the force of the blast – it lifts him off his feet, and he’s airborne, not how he’d ever hoped but without control, without choice.

Time slows to a crawl as he desperately tries to find a way to rectify his mistake. When it suddenly jerks him back into the present, its to him colliding with a glass pane that shatters into shards, cutting deep and digging deeper, wooden frame piercing him in a dozen places, and body clear of the now empty hole where a window should have gone.

The wind whips through his hair, over his wounds, and he has a moment to throw a cocoon of power around himself before his back slams into the ground of the street below. He bounces on the air cushion, but it gives out, and his body hits and rolls on the harsh stone beneath him. Paved streets are a nuisance. The blood he’s choking on is a nuisance. The way his leg twists, that too is a nuisance, but more than that, it hurts and won’t move like he wants it to. Even just breathing shifts the large shard shoved through his chest, just shy of his left pectoral, and he smacks his lips around the wet sucking sound leaving them.

High above, where birds alone were meant to fly, a face peers down at Sync, but he can’t make out the features. Maybe it’s the bastard who blasted him with fire. Maybe it’s someone else. At the moment, Sync can’t bring himself to care.

Assess, assess, plan, plan, work, work, but there is no plan, there is nothing to assess. His brain is firing off conflicting information, panicking in its lack of understanding about the sucking slick squishy squishy don’t move and it tries to keep up with the rapidfire pain, but Sync’s eyes see nothing but black and white and endless, open sky.

He twitches his hand and wants to reach for the birds soaring so beautifully above.

Instead, he sees a face above him grow closer, like the head and neck extended down from the missing window above. It laughs at him, and he squints at it, trying to see what’s so damn funny.

“Don’t understand why anyone would be afraid of you,” the man muses, his lips moving but Sync unable to hear the sounds produced.

He can’t seem to care right now either. It’s easier to close his eyes. So he does, even though his brain, somewhere mixed into the misfiring neurons and panicking cells, he thinks sleep is a poor decision.

After all, he might not wake back up.


End file.
